Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

64 • Truth & Reconciliation CommissionAboriginal family at the Elkhorn, Manitoba, school. Indian Affairs took the position that once parents enrolled theirchildren in a residential school, only the government could determine when they would be discharged. General SynodArchives, Anglican Church of Canada, P75-103-S8-56.diets. 127 Even these improvements did not end the inequity in residential school funding.In 1966, residential schools in Saskatchewan were spending between $694 and$1,193 a year per student. 128 Comparable child-welfare institutions in Canada werespending between $3,300 and $9,855 a year. In the United States, the annual cost ofresidential care per child was between $4,500 and $14,059. 129Compelling attendanceIt was not until 1894 that the federal government put in place regulations relatingto residential school attendance. Under the regulations adopted in that year, residentialschool attendance was voluntary. However, if an Indian agent or justice of thepeace thought that any “Indian child between six and sixteen years of age is not beingproperly cared for or educated, and that the parent, guardian or other person havingcharge or control of such child, is unfit or unwilling to provide for the child’s education,”he could issue an order to place the child “in an industrial or boarding school, inwhich there may be a vacancy for such child.”